Dismantling the Ottoman Heritage? The Evolution of Bucharest in the 19th century

In the course of the 19th century, the aspect of Bucharest completely changed. At the beginning of that century, it had had many of the features typical of Ottoman cities but, by 1900, it had completely changed. Bucharest looked like a Western capital and was considered to be the “little Paris” of the Balkans. Most historians judge this process as an attempt to break free of the Ottoman heritage and this is probably true in many respects. The three turning points of this process were the years 1830, 1862 and 1878, moments of great political importance in the birth of the Romanian national state. In 1830 a Russian protectorate was imposed on Moldova and Wallachia. The two principalities received more autonomy than in the previous period, and a city council, operating in the infrastructural field, was established in Bucharest. The objective was to create a modern town, but the appearance of Bucharest did not change to any great extent. The city council did not wield enough power to order the demolition of the dangerous wooden houses, which easily caught fire or collapsed during floods and earthquakes, or closing the roads. In 1862, the United Principalities of Romania were recognised by the main European powers, and became a highly autonomous state. It was in the same year that Bucharest became a capital city, and a municipality was created in 1866. The municipality was authorised to operate infrastructures and public services as before, but it had more power and better possibilities of acting efficiently, as a budget was established for the capital. One primary duty for the new state was to create offices for the new political, cultural and economic institutions. Their architectural style was of considerable importance and, following the European tradition, the Neoclassical style was most frequently used. Most of the new buildings were designed by French architects. It was evident that the will of the Romanian political leaders was to create links between Romania and the other countries of Western Europe. The third step towards the transformation of Bucharest came in 1878, when Romania became an independent state - a passage which strengthened the already ongoing process. However, the greatest change after independence was in the architectural field: a new class of Romanian architects was born. Most of them had studied in France and initially they continued to adopt the Neoclassical style. But things were changing in Romania. A new cultural and political élite was rising, demanding the recognition of tradition and criticising the old liberal leaders who only borrowed artificial patterns from abroad. In this period a new architectural style was elaborated: the Neoromanian or National style. It was an attempt to demonstrate and confirm the existence of a specific Romanian identity, this time distinguished not only by the Ottoman heritage, but also by the Western influence. Paradoxically, the features of the new style were not taken by the local tradition of the wood countryside houses, but from the religious architecture and from the old boyar houses. Paradoxically again, this meant that many elements of the Ottoman and Byzantine architecture were rediscovered.